Cats can be the innocent victims of human folly as is shown in this video about the Syrian war. This is a great video. A calico cat, probably a community cat, is featured in the video at 7:24 minutes and 12:50 minutes into the video. You can drag the timeline bar to those times and start the video there if you wish. The bar is just below the video itself. However, I’d strongly advise watching the video because it is so good. It is gives a good insight into the war and shows how the domestic cat integrates into Syrian life at this time.

Note: to drag the video to those times place the cursor over the circle to the left of the bar below the video, left click and then drag the circle to the right hand side while watching the time as you go.

In my opinion, the Syrian war started with a revolution for democracy which created chaos and anarchy over large parts of the country which in turn allowed people from other countries with other interests to join in, in an effort to claim a stake in the country. These are organisations that are, by and large, offshoots of Al Qaeda who want to create a fundamentalist Muslim state. This has muddied the whole situation.

The West does not want to interevene for this reason and because the Iraq and Afghan wars are expensive failures in terms of money, lives lost and lives broken.

You’ll see at 7:24 minutes and 12:50 minutes into the video a charning and intelligent man saying that if there were more cats like the calico cat sitting on the plastic chair in the video, then perhaps the West and particularly America would intervene and, as a consequence, help defend the original revolutionaries – the Syrians who want a democracy. He argues that the cat is more important to Americans than Syrians.

He makes the point that cat videos on YouTube getting one million hits are more interesting to the West than the Syrian war. He is correct. The excellent video on this page has about 42,000 views at the time of this post. Many silly cat videos have views in the order of 1-20 million and more. Some of them are rehashed versions of previous videos: repetition. Cat videos trump human suffering everytime.

However the Syrian in the video does not know that there is a need for a revolution in the world of cats in America. Ironically, there are far more cats killed per year in America than there are people killed in Syria. So, I am not sure the man in the film is correct when he implies people in the USA are more concerned about the domestic cat that the Syrian people who demand democracy. People in the West don’t seem to care that much about anything other than what benefits them.

Note:

My thanks to Marc for telling me about the video.

The cat in the video on the chair seems somewhat stunned. For a cat, the chaos, lack of routine and noise of war must be traumatic or at least disturbing.

Interesting point. Good well be true. There is a lot of smoke and mirrors surrounding the Syrian war. We don’t know where the truth is. It think it is a good video though. It puts you in the heart of it. Gives a feel for what it is like and there are two cats in it, which is why I had the chance to put it on PoC 🙂 Anything with a cat in is fair game for an article.

I found this video very sad and very frightening and I know nothing about foreign politics, who is right or who is wrong, but I think it’s unfair that it was said the USA care more about cats than people, that’s so untrue!
Unwanted cats are killed every day, cats toe ends are amputated for the convenience of their ‘owners’ and cats are shot at by gun happy cat haters and crimes against cats are ignored by police!
Yes I think it’s sad that funny cat videos have so many hits and videos like this one don’t, but what can ordinary people do? I feel for everyone in Syria but I personally can’t make a difference to their lives. So is it wrong for me to watch a Simon’s Cat video (never videos of real cats being abused or mocked in any way) for a bit of light relief from the horrors of this world, horrors cased by human beings NOT by cats!
It’s the same old story, being asked why I care about cats when there are people needing to be cared about? The answer is I DO care about people too and do what I can to help them but we can each only do so much and we can care for both cats AND people too and why should innocent cats suffer without us caring, because of people causing their suffering?
That girl in the video speaking so lightly of her own possible death is very disturbing.
It’s truly awful and upsetting and very worrying that all this is happening.

It is a powerful video and I agree it is disturbing. Life has become cheap. I think the person who says that cats are more interesting that the Syrian war (or words to that effect) is frustrated at a lack of involvement from the West generally to help what he says is oppressed Syrians (by Assad’s forces), the people who started the revolution for democracy.

I agree though that there is little the West can do because it could make things worse. The answer is with Assad and the Russians to begin peace talks and to find a solution that results in a government that the people accept. When there is peace the West can then be involved in rebuilding the country.

I don’t think so. This documentary is just another type of propaganda to justify war against Syrian government…
VERY biased just like Western media! Do you know who is this filmmaker Matthew Van Dyke?

These people in video are terrorists, not freedom fighters, not rebels – terrorists. Most of them are Islamists, includes Al Qaeda which is now a friend of USA. They want democracy… oh yes…

…Mrs. Erdoğan also in every sentence reminds us of ”democracy”, while his police attacks peaceful protesters… Like once he said about the democracy “a train that takes you to your destination, and then you get off.” How different it is in Syrians case? Islamists and terrorists will bring democracy to Syria – seriously?

Should we ignore what Syrian president has to say?
It’s always better get to know both of sides of issue. Otherwise to fall for propaganda is so easy.